Unpredictability still key for F1

After a broken blue rubber tube put Lewis Hamilton out of the Australian Grand Prix, it was remarkable to hear that Nico Rosberg's retirement in Singapore was caused by contamination from a substance used in pre-event servicing.

This chemical, invisible to team members working on the car, sat undetected inside Rosberg's steering column for the entire Singapore weekend. And unluckily for the German, it only caused the short circuit that wrecked his controls at the very worst time: just before the start of the race.

The two freak failures for Hamilton and Rosberg, which may yet have a defining influence on the world title battle, are a stark reminder of how tiny circumstances can have huge consequences for state-of-the-art Formula 1 teams that spend hundreds of millions of pounds on trying to ensure that things work perfectly.

They also highlight the conflict that exists between what the teams want and what the fans, media and sport's commercial interests desire.

On the one side, the teams go out there with the sole intent of gaining perfection from their car and driver. In an ideal world, a team like Mercedes wants to lock out the front row of the grid with ease.

Then on Sunday, it wants to race around trouble-free, with a straightforward pitstop at a predictable time, to grab the maximum points. Then it wants a quick pack-up before heading to the next race.

On the other side, those that tune in and watch the sport want to see unpredictability: mixed-up grids, the ebb and flow of form between teams, drivers and teams over and underachieving to mix things up, unreliability and race results that are not guaranteed until the chequered flag is waved.

Rosberg watches from the sidelines in Singapore © LAT

This contradiction reminded me of a fascinating insight that McLaren gave about its tie-up with technical partner SAP earlier this year. F1's quest to restrict what teams can do to perfect their cars in the real world - through testing bans and windtunnel restrictions - has simply fuelled an expansion of computer analysis to dig ever deeper to try to hone performance.

As McLaren's F1 CEO Jonathan Neale explained: "We have less and less track testing, less and less time on Friday, and less and less windtunnel time. As those capacity constraints come up, the value of a unit of information is going up, so the effort we are prepared to make to extract the most from it is going up. And that goes counter to the ambition to drive costs down. It doesn't, it drives costs up."

What it also does is get teams closer to achieving the perfection that they so desire. Neale revealed just how deep McLaren's data simulation work went. Race starts are pored over second by second to compare the strengths and weaknesses of every team on the grid. McLaren factors in 2500 different variables to achieve its perfect race strategy.

Remarkable stuff, but isn't it all effort that ultimately makes the racing worse? By helping teams get closer to delivering perfection, is it not taking away the chances of unpredictability and drama that those on the outside much prefer? Neale didn't quite see it that way.

"The last thing I want is unpredictably," he said. "There are a number of ways of being able to provide jeopardy, which is what all sports need without resorting to Wacky Races ideas.

"There is so much in this sport we don't understand. And we are being boxed, and in some cases, rightly so, into a more constrained area of aerodynamic regulations as well.

"We are in a new era of F1. There is a lot of unpredictability out there. It has thrown up some thrills and spills and unusual grid positions, which is causing strain for some of us and joy for others. But in the end if you win a world championship you deserve it. I think we are a long way off taking jeopardy off this sport."

So perhaps Mercedes, with its blue rubber tubes and servicing procedures, has proved that despite F1's advances, and the determination by teams to deliver perfection, a decent level of unpredictability remains.

And however much those on the receiving end hate it at the time, such jeopardy is a good thing overall for F1.